Responses to Jenkins and spaces in a game

It seems as though we've reached a point in our development through this class where theories of design are gaining more prominence. As such, it makes sense to examine various theories for the design of our projects in the course, and to apply our experiences in games to these design theories (or vice versa...). This is an exciting time, I think.

Incidentally, I spent a great deal of my focus this week thinking about spatial orientation of game elements, and so found the Jenkins article to be the most compelling of our readings for this week. Jenkins' position is that while games may not successfully use classical narrative components as well as films or novels might, and since games are interactive more than they simply story-driven, the game environment plays a greater role in developing the story and the game experience. He makes a strong argument against the Ludologist position that game mechanics are the main theoretical component of games, or that straight narrative analysis needs to be the main focus as the Narratologists would have us believe. Jenkins draws connections between games and science fiction, another form of media which seems to attract negative criticism for failing to adhere to more classical narrative theories. In the case of science fiction, the setting holds sway over the characters' development or the plot progression. In Heinlein's works, for example, much of the page space is taken up describing political climate and social interaction within a futuristic society. His characters, for the most part, are generally flat guides for the environment. However, this does not mean that Starship Troopers isn't an engaging book; this simply means that the focus of this book isn't John Rico's development as a leader so much as it is his trip through the Federation and the Arachnid War. Rico becomes a leader in the Mobile Infantry because his job in the book is to explain how things are in Heinlein's future imperfect. High school, basic training, the battlefields of Clandathu, officer training, service aboard the Rodger Young... all of these settings are the meat the reader experiences through Rico's eyes.

In much the same way we engage in spatial interaction with video game worlds, such as Azeroth or Mars, in the shoes of our mostly mute avatars. In Half-Life, for example, the player engages in conflict as a means of exploring the world and solving a problem or set of problems. He acts upon the environment as a means of solving the embedded narrative, which unfolds as he explores the world, shoots aliens, and tries to figure out what in the hell happened. In this way Bartles' player types can be seen as all attended to through the development of the game's story-world.

What does that have to do with our thing? It is the task of the Woolf World team to develop a virtual representation of modernist London to the exacting specifications of Woolf scholars, who will, I'm certain, be looking for any reason to pan our work. In order to build a successful learning experience for the visitors to our project, we will need to borrow heavily from the spatial eccentricities Jenkins advocates for his game experiences, as well as the kinds of spatial divides Aarseth describes as existing in WoW. We can't build England, but we can build the neighborhoods we want to describe, and we can build an interesting and engaging virtual spatial experience.

...I think we can, anyway. I keep thinking of rivers and mountains. I think that will figure prominently. Needless to say, I'll be focusing primarily on the "game world" and narrative progression of the design document. After all, isn't that what games are all about?